My Big Dream
a story by my dad, Ervin Zarske
I started music lessons when I was about 9 years old. I played the acoustical guitar for about a year when my father decided it would be better for me to learn a horn of some kind and so we settled on the clarinet. My parents’ dream was that someday I would be playing my clarinet in a big band like Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw. My clarinet instructor, who was excellent, advised us that the only way I might get into a big-name band was to play saxophone in addition to clarinet, and so my lessons on saxophone began, along with the clarinet. I practiced faithfully, even though there were many times I would much rather have been playing baseball with my friends.
The thing is, this fantasy of playing with a big-name band had at that time, very realistic possibilities. Every big and small city had local big bands that were not famous but were still popular in their area. Then we had the many, what were called, A-List bands like Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Harry James, Les Brown, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, and on and on. These were the bands aspiring young musicians like me really wanted to play with. Then there were the B-List bands like Bob Chester, Bobby Sherwood, Horace Heidt, Sammy Kaye, Blue Barron, and a host of others. These were not our favorite bands, but ones we gladly would have taken a job with to go on the road, so I practiced my saxophone, rehearsed after school every Wednesday with our local big band, and played for dances every weekend.
One Wednesday after school, one of the sax players made a casual remark that he hadn’t opened his sax case since last week’s rehearsal, giving preference to homework. I was so dedicated to our goals, I could not imagine how anyone who wanted to really play this music could go for a week without practicing.
This was my dream:
It started with an actual movie called “The Fleet’s In” starring Jimmy Dorsey and His Orchestra, with William Holden and Dorothy Lamour, which was made around 1942. This movie had an often-used plot that goes like this — Boy meets girl, Boy gets girl, Boy loses girl through an innocent misunderstanding, Boy wins girl back, and everyone ends up happy. Throughout this movie, William Holden and Dorothy Lamour are constantly asking Jimmy Dorsey for advice regarding their romantic problems with each other. Jimmy, who seems to welcome these interruptions as he is leading his band, refers to the two stars as “Kids” as, for instance, “You Kids need some time alone to work this out” . . . or “You Kids need more time together.” It was always “You Kids this” and “You Kids that”, and for some reason I liked the idea of the bandleader being so friendly with the main actors and I actually believed that I might be like Jimmy someday, with movie stars as friends.
In my mind, I rewrote the movie as follows:
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First of all, I had to give myself a new name. I knew there was a young kid playing tenor sax with the Harry James orchestra by the name of Corky Corcoran. I needed a name like that. I liked Flip because it had that certain Humphrey Bogart I-don’t-give-a-damn quality to it, so I changed my name to Flip Flipison. Then, in my fantasy, I advertised the movie as “The Fleet’s In”, starring Jimmy Dorsey and his Orchestra, featuring the exciting tenor sax of Flip Flipison. Also appearing are William Holden and Dorothy Lamour. I see myself wearing a powder blue double-breasted jacket with black tuxedo pants, sitting on the bandstand, dressed like the other 14 band members. The only one dressed differently is Jimmy, who has a maroon jacket on, a nice offset to our powder blues.
When the script called for Holden and Lamour to confer with Jimmy Dorsey regarding their love relationship, and as the band kept playing on while Jimmy was talking to Bill Holden, Dorothy Lamour walked softly to where I was sitting and whispered in my ear, “I’ll bet you’re as hot as that sax you’re playing”. So not only did this lead to Dorothy Lamour being my girlfriend, but I was playing in one of the best big bands in the country.
When we weren’t playing at fancy places in Hollywood, we traveled on super-luxury trains all over the country, playing in the best hotels, the best ballrooms, the best theatres, the best supper clubs, with appearances on radio and even in movies. In my fantasy, I would picture my high school friend, who chose to do homework over practicing his saxophone, now selling vacuum-cleaners door-to-door. Even if he became CEO of General Motors, in my mind, he would always be a door-to-door vacuum-cleaner salesman as I was playing with one of the best bands in the country and enjoying a life of glamour and adventure. But, like the stock market, unforeseen events intervened just as I was nearing the age and proficiency where I really could have fulfilled my dream.
It all started with a guy named Bill Haley, and a group called The Comets, and a record they made called Rock Around the Clock. Soon there were other, similar, records that followed, along with a whole new type of music called Rock and Roll. Before long, to compete with the likes of Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Perry Como, there came a bunch of newcomers like Elvis Presley, The Beatles, and The Rolling Stones. One by one, the big bands were dropping like flies, as they say, and whereas before, the same pop music was enjoyed by the kids and their parents, now the kids had their own music and their parents had theirs.
So, just about the time I was old enough and accomplished enough to play with a big-name band, there were virtually none left. It would be like devoting your whole life to becoming a brain surgeon only to find out, when you were ready to apply your skills, a new procedure had eliminated any need for brain surgeons.
Since my big band fantasy was considered dead, I wondered if I might have been wrong to criticize my high school friend for putting homework ahead of his music. But then, it was only because I kept up my music and became a full-time student at the Cleveland Institute of Music, majoring on clarinet, that I was able to pass the tough audition and be accepted into the U.S. Air Force Band.
I played with some excellent musicians in the Air Force Band, but that’s another story.
